Shadow Expansion in Unit 3

3 Shadow Expansion in Unit 3 he Redevelopment Authority' s annual report of 1960 announced the T creation of Unit 3 in West Philadelphia, which ran ™ roughly from Powel- ton and Lancaster Avenues south to Chestnut Street, between 34th and 39th Streets. Unit 3 properties would be redeveloped in conjunction with the West Philadelphia Corporation (WPC), an institutional co ali tion that included the University of Pennsylvania, the Drexel Institute of Technology, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, and the Presbyterian and Osteopathic hospitals in West Philadelphia. T e RDA heralded Unit 3 as ™ a major step toward the concept of a great university city extending from the Schuylkill River to 44th Street. 1 T e orchestration of Unit 3– the RDA de mo li tions, the construction of the much ballyhooed University City Sci- ence Center, and the permanent removal of the unit' s predominantly black population– undermined Penn' s community relations in West Philadel- phia for decades af er the clearances, with af ershocks that are still felt today. T is chapter provides a detailed account of Unit 3' s history. Our analysis also serves as a cautionary tale for urban universities in their dealings with their neighbors– one that Penn president Judith Rodin took to heart thirty years later when she launched the West Philadelphia Initiatives. North of Market: The African American Diaspora in West Philadelphia At the outset of the Great Expansion, the University confronted transfor- mations in the demography and economy of the city and West Philadelphia. T e burden of these changes fell heaviest on the city' s burgeoning African American population. T e great migration that was spurred by World War I and continued into the 1920s contributed some 140,000 southern blacks to 88 Shadow Expansion in Unit 3 89 Philadelphia' s total population, fostering the growth of three sizable black districts in the city: the southern tier of Center City, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia (the old 24th Ward, Market Street to Girard Avenue, 32nd to 44th streets). Relegated to the bottom rung of the city' s economic ladder, with the exception of a small middle class of African American doc- tors, lawyers, teachers, and caterers (™ Old Philadelphians like the attorneys Raymond Pace Alexander and his wife, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, who held a Penn PhD in economics as well as a Penn law degree), blacks en- countered wretched housing conditions in a rent- prof teering market and entrenched hostility, denigration, harassment, and violence at the hands of Philadelphia' s Irish, Italian, and ™ old- stock Euro- American groups. African American employment gains during World War I, primarily in the railroad and steel industries, dissipated af er the war: ™ domestic ser vice and unskilled labor were the only jobs available for the large majority of Philadelphia blacks, many of whom were unemployed. In the city' s heavily segregated textile industry, blacks could only f nd jobs as janitors.2 Wretched conditions improved incrementally for Philadelphia blacks with the New Deal and the Demo cratic Party' s courting of northern blacks as a voting bloc. A limited breakthrough came in 1944 when the city' s black ac- tivists, working with the Roo se velt administration' s Fair Employment Prac- tices Commission and leaders of the integrationist Transportation Workers Union, forced the Philadelphia Transportation Company to employ African Americans as drivers and motormen on the city' s buses and trolley lines. T is was a Pyrrhic victory, however, as it marked a realignment of city politics that would disadvantage Philadelphia blacks in the coming years: many race- conscious Irish and Italian Americans lef the party of the New Deal for the Republican Party.3 World War II set the stage for a second great migration of black south- erners to Philadelphia and other major cities outside the South. ™ T e urgent need for soldiers to f ght abroad and for wage- earners to forge an ë arsenal of democracy' at home, as one historian puts it, ™ convinced a f ood of African Americans to leave the South. Mechanized cotton pickers shrunk the need for agrarian labor just as the lure of good jobs in war industries sapped the will to stay in the f elds. 4 Between 1940 and 1950, Philadelphia' s black population grew by 50 percent, from 250,000 to 375,000.5 But the economic boom was short lived. Tens of thousands of factory jobs were lost af er the war. T e closing of Cramp' s Shipyard; heavy layof s at Baldwin Locomotive, Midvale Steel, Sun Ship, and the Frankford Arsenal; and starting in the early 1950s, the movement of the city' s textile jobs to nonunion southern 90 The Builder cities, signaled the decline of Philadelphia manufacturing, with dire ramif - cations for blacks and working- class whites with insuf cient means to leave their ethnic enclaves.6 T e southern black inf ux continued into the 1950s, with in- migration and natural population growth occurring against the backdrop of the city' s di- minished industrial base and the metropolitan area' s transition to a ser vice economy.7 By 1960, Philadelphia' s African American population totaled more than 529,000, a 41 percent increase since 1950, with blacks holding a 26.4 percent share of the city total.8 In the 1950s, white out- migration to the suburbs accounted for a loss of 69,000, or 3 percent, in the general population, a dim- inution that was never recouped.9 In the postwar decades, the suburbs supplanted the city in population and economic growth.10 Much of the job outf ow was to new landscaped factory sites and industrial parks in the city' s northeast tier, and in Montgomery and Bucks counties.11 T e city' s long- term losses were staggering: 115,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared over four decades, with textiles and apparel accounting for 79 percent of the attrition. Forty- two thousand jobs, ™ mostly in manufacturing, disappeared in one eighteen- month period amid the national ™ stagf ation of the early 1970s.12 Discriminatory hiring practices at the new suburban plants combined with segregation in suburban housing markets served to ghettoize blacks in Philadelphia, where they were excluded from the city' s dwindling industrial base. While blacks gained substantial repre sen ta tion in the municipal sector through the ™ non- partisan, merit- based civil ser vice system enacted by the 1951 city charter, their jobs were in the low- wage categories. A growing incre- ment of the African American population was poor, marginally employed, and living in segregated neighborhoods abandoned by white ethnics. In 1959, 43 percent of unemployed Philadelphians were black; in 1960, the nonwhite unemployment rate stood at 10.7 percent, compared to the white rate of 5 percent. Segregation in the city' s craf s and building trades unions en- sured that blacks in these trades earned about one- third less than their white coworkers.13 Housing and public education were also structured to disadvantage blacks. Compounding racial isolation, public housing, such as it was (only fourteen thousand units were built between 1937 and 1963), was segregated.14 Redlining by lenders contributed to the deterioration of black neighborhoods, and racially motivated school board decisions on site selec- tion and design of new schools relegated black children to the city' s oldest and worst public schools.15 Shadow Expansion in Unit 3 91 West Philadelphia' s census tracts recorded expansive growth in African Amer- ican settlement, from 18.8 percent of the district' s total in 1940 to 52.8 percent by 1960. North of Market Street, the f gure for ™ nonwhite was 58 percent (compared to 27 percent for the city).16 Mantua, a racially segmented neighborhood about ten blocks (one mile) north of Penn, comprised two of these tracts. Between 1940 and 1950, blacks increased their share of Mantua' s population from 45.7 percent to 78.2 percent. By 1960, they accounted for 94.7 percent of 16,886 residents; by 1970, 97.2 percent of 12,044. Between 1950 and 1960, a tipping ef ect apparently occurred with a precipitous exodus of whites in Mantua, from 4,208 to 862. In 1960, 10.8 percent of Mantua' s black labor force was unemployed, compared to 2.6 percent of white workers. Among ™ nonwhites counted as employed in 1960, only 1.6 percent was in the category of ™ professional, technical, and kindred workers, compared to 5.8 percent of whites. T at 79.5 percent of house hold incomes fell below $39,018 (constant 2011 dollars) suggests a community that was struggling eco nom ical ly (a poverty index was not reported in the 1960 census). Reported in the 1970 census, Mantua' s poverty rate was 37.2 percent, compared to the city rate of 11.2 percent. T at 43.6 percent of Mantua' s families were headed by females with no husband present, compared to 18.9 percent for the city, suggests a breakdown of the neighborhood' s so- cial fabric in the 1960s.17 T e largest part of Unit 3 was assigned to two census tracts that wrapped around the blocks between 31st and 40th Street, from Market to Spring Gar- den, Mantua' s southern boundary. Tract 24I included the area between 36th and 40th streets. At the start of the de cade, blacks dominated tract 24I– though not to the same extent as in Mantua and adjacent neighborhoods to the west– accounting for 78.8 percent of the tract' s population. Many of these people experienced grinding poverty: a third of black house holds earned less than $15,607 (2011 constant dollars).

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